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Wednesday, February 7, 2018

Steps to Install Dynamics
365 for Finance and Operations Platform Update on Local Developer or a Demo VM

Greetings Dear Friends!

Hope you all had a great start to 2018! :)

It's been a while, since I did a blog post. The reason being super busy with implementing Dynamics 365 For Finance and Operations and Retail for few clients of mine. As, I'm now doing consulting for my own business, it really gets hard to find time to do a detailed blog post.

In the last 3 years since Dec 2015, I have been extensively working on the new version since it was called Dynamics AX 7 on TAP Programs, delivering training to partners and customers, Implementing and Upgrading to Dynamics 365 For Finance and Operations, Implementing Dynamics 365 For Retail and integrating between CRM (Sales) and Operations via Common Data Services. I will share that experience in a different blog post.

For now, Let's get started with this post. In this particular post, I'm putting down the steps involved to install Platform Update 11 on a Local Developers VM.

Microsoft is doing a pretty good job with their docs site where they have listed the instructions on how to do a PU on Cloud and disconnected VMs. Have a look at the link below

My post supplements Microsoft's documentation and additionally it lists down the steps with some more details and screenshots and towards the end of this post, you will notice how I validated and verified if my PU installation was successfully done.

a.Download the latest platform update package
(zip) file from LCS

b.Go to LCS > Your Project and then navigate to Asset Library by clicking on the breadcrumb bar

c.Once you are in the Asset Library page, click on
Software deployable package as shown above. will start downloading the
package. Note it’s around 700 MB so it might take 5 to 10 mins

depending on
your bandwidth, to download.

d.Once it’s downloaded copy the Platformupdate.zip
file into your local vm and Extract the zip file to your local drive (I created a folder
called PlatformUpdate11)

e.Next, Open the DefaultTopologydata.xml file from E:\PlatformUpdate11\AXPlatformUpdateReplace the machine name from the localhost to
your VM name

f.

g.Open command prompt from the VM (as Admin), and
then navigate to the Extracted folder to run the command AxUpdateInstaller.exe list (This will help to determine the
components and their versions which are installed on your local dev box)

oFor e.g. to analyze the downtime requirements for
production, and so on.

oTo
send the file to Microsoft in the event of failure to install a deployable
package.

o.Verify if the components are updated
correctly.

Run AxUpdateInstaller.exe
list command and see the updated components. Note the difference in version
numbers

Update 11:

p.

Also note, your Visual Studio Extension for D365
gets automatically updated as part of the Update 11

How
to check new VS Extension:

Open Visual Studio -> Go to Help >
About Visual Studio and check in installed Products list. We should be able to
see the latest version of the VS Extension – Dynamics 365 Unified Operations
Platform 7.0.4679.3516

Check the update PU 11 version from the browser:

That's all for now. Hope it gives you an idea on how to do a PU Update on a Local Developer's VM. Note, each PU Update may have slight differences here and there, so I always recommend to visit the Microsoft docs site to get the up-to-date documentation before you perform these steps.

Friday, May 26, 2017

Since August 2016 - Platform 2 Update, for deploying any new Dynamics 365 for Operations environment, configuring ARM is a pre-requisite. Through this article, I want to share my experience and few tips/troubleshooting steps which I had come across while configuring ARM

Let's now talk about how to configure ARM before deploying a new Dynamics 365 for operations environment.

So, once you are in your LCS (LifeCycle Services) page, before deploying your environment, you will need to set up Azure subscription, so click on Microsoft Azure Settings

Once you click on Microsoft Azure Settings, you will see the below page where you need to Authorize the tenant administrator of the organization, access to Dynamics 365 for operations application. For this, you will need to click the Authorize Link under the Organizational list group.

A new window gets opened as shown below where you have to enable Dynamics Deployment Services.

On pressing the Accept button, this grants access for Dynamics Deployment Services into your Azure Active Directory. Go back to the previous page and under Organization list settings and click again on Authorize. Refresh the browser and you will see the Authorization status as Authorization complete, as shown below:

Tip - At times, I have seen you have to click on the Authorize button multiple times to get the status as "Authorization complete"

Tip - You have to select Dynamics Deployment Services - Contributor and then click on Next button, failing to do so will not perform the validation

For the next step, that is to provide authorization, you will need to either:

a. Download and upload the Management Certificate, OR

b. Go to Access Control Panel (IAM) in your Azure portal and ensure that the tenant which you are using is added as part of contributor role in AAD

For Option a, that is uploading the management certificate, you will need to log into your Classic Azure Portal, to upload the certificate

For Option b, you can do this by launching the New Azure portal and then add the tenant user to the subscription as a Contributor.

Go to More Services > Subscriptions, then select your subscription, and click on Access Control (IAM), then press the (Add) button

Once the above steps are completed, when you go back to your Azure settings page in LCS, Make sure, that ARM enabled is checked for your subscription. Now, you are ready to setup your Azure region and proceed with deploying the environment

Friday, May 19, 2017

I got half a dozen email since yesterday from Microsoft as I have few Dynamics AX 2012 R3 and few Dynamics 365 for Operations VM running under different subscriptions.

As most of you are aware by now about WannaCrypt virus, Microsoft suggests to patch our Dynamics 365 for Operations VM's at the earliest. Below is an extract of the email form Microsoft

Note: If you do not have any Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Operations or Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 environments deployed in your own Azure subscriptions, you can ignore this mail.

In response to the recent global WannaCrypt ransomware attack, we recommend all Azure customers that have Dynamics 365 for Operations or Dynamics AX 2012 environments deployed in your own Azure subscriptions, to take the steps called out in the WannaCrypt Attacks: Guidance for Azure Customers blog post. This applies to environments in your subscription like demo and dev environments. Environments managed by Microsoft are already being proactively handled by us.

Please take the above steps immediately to run a secure infrastructure and to protect your organization from attacks like these today and in the future.

Monday, May 15, 2017

Greetings!This is an update to my previous post - https://daxdilip.blogspot.com.au/2017/03/dynamics-365-for-operations-tip-mobile.html, where I shared a workaround on how to view the out of box mobile workspaces from System Administration > Parameters form and publish them.This workaround is no longer needed as in this post, i will explain the steps on how to achieve the same using standard process:Overview
As you are aware, that wiki is being deprecated, and now Microsoft is moving to a new docs site for D365FO help, so keep an eye on Dynamics 365 for Operations Mobile Workspaces as this is the page where Microsoft will publish their upcoming mobile workspacesAt the moment, we have the following workspaces for mobile

Most of the above workspaces are linked to a Hotfix which can be downloaded from LCSPreviously on wiki, We had Inventory on hand and sales order workspaces, but looks like they are not ported to the new Dynamics docs site. In this post, I will walk through an example of setting up mobile workspaces for sales order and inventory on hand.Step 1:Go to LCS > Project > Issue Search and search for the below KB or just click on this linkKB 4013633

Once you download the hotfix, extract it to your VM where you want to install the hotfix. Since this is a metadata hotfix, this needs to be treated bit differently, as it can't be installed from Asset Library.

Step 8Now, you should be able to go to your environment where you want to apply the deployable package and then click on Apply Updates from maintain environment and select the deployable package and start deploying.

The environment will go into Servicing state and no one will be able to use the environment at this point. This may take 1 to 2 hours to get deployed.Once the package is deployed, you can now go to System Administration > Parameters > Mobile parameters and pubilsh the default mobile workspaces and start using them